How to add more power to Google

How to add more power to Google

When you want to find out something about the purple bird you last saw at the Lotus Pond in Hyderabad, you are most likely to type a Google query like 'purple water bird Lotus Pond' and voila! you would discover the Purple Moorhen on your screen.

Then, if you Google 'Purple Moorhen', you will learn the bird's scientific Latin name 'Porphyrio porphyrio', the fact that it is found in India, Australia and Africa and how the state of Florida is trying to eradicate its accidentally-introduced population.

Most Google searchers, thus, with just a bit more inside information, can become super searchers. With these tips, you'll be an expert in almost no time.

Find a word on the page

Have you ever done a search and then discovered that you're on a very long web page and have no idea where your search words are?

Click on it and you'll see the submenu item labelled 'Find.'

Click NEXT to read further. . .

Image: A staff takes a nap in a nap pod that blocks out light and sound at Google headquarters, California.Photographs: Erin Siegal/Reuters

How to add more power to Google

This happens fairly often. What you can do is just look for the Edit menu.

If you click on that, you'll see a small window that let's you search for any word on the page.

This is a lifesaver when you're searching for a particular word and it's found only on the 10th screen down.

Install the Google Toolbar

The Toolbar, offered for all the different internet browsers, lets you do a plethora of things to help you search, including bookmarking good web pages and translating terms you see on the page, among other things.

The one Google Toolbar feature that really powers users is the highlight button.

How to add more power to Google

If you do a search on Google and end up on a page (say, the Wikipedia page about Purple Moorhens), when you click on the highlighter button, it will highlight all the appearances of your search words on that page.

Explore different Google search properties

Google lets you search the web for images and videos as well. But did you know that Google also lets you search through the collected news archives going back to the mid 1800s?

How to add more power to Google

Other context terms that people find useful are DIY or how to (to find do-it-yourself guides), guideline (to find suggestions and guides), curriculum, lesson plans and summary are good context terms to help find particular types of content.

Use the minus sign

You can use it to eliminate unwanted results. If, for example, you're searching for the jazz standard song, recorded by Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, and others, that includes the lyric It was just one of those things, but the song in question is not Cole Porter's Just one of Those Things, then change the query to it was just one of those things Billie Holiday -- Porter.

You'll eliminate all the Cole Porter songs.

Daniel Russell is an expert on search quality and is based out of Google's California office

Image: Surfboards lean against a wall at the Google office in Santa Monica, California.Photographs: Reuters